The Grand Sage's Archive
Why are you here, of all people?
Long ago, a great calamity had descended upon the Empire. The scourge of monsters — creatures that came pouring out when the Gates overflowed beyond all prediction. A Stampede.
The scenes that followed were almost beyond bearing. Mothers devoured before their children's eyes. Lovers torn apart, leaving behind nothing but the hand their beloved had been holding. Every soul alive was left trembling in dread.
Every nation declared a state of emergency and barred the gates of their cities. But a gate and a garrison of soldiers were the bare minimum required to hold the line. The villages that lacked the men and the provisions could only be ravaged, and the whole world filled with screaming.
Then, amid the unbroken string of reports announcing village after village wiped from the map, a single report of victory arrived. That a backwater village had prevailed against monsters at all was astonishing enough — more astonishing still was the claim that every last one of them had been felled by a single person.
The Empire dispatched soldiers to investigate, and they found the creatures torn and gouged past all recognition. From traces that no lone individual's strength should have been able to leave behind, they tracked down the one responsible: an eccentric who had withdrawn from the world and happened to be staying in that village for a time. One Prion Hybel.
In the aftermath, his power was formally acknowledged. He received the title of Grand Sage and struck a contract with the Empire — and not a contract between empire and empire, mind you, but between the Empire and a single individual. Many said that fact alone was enough to gauge the depths of his strength.
Add to that the renown of the mage who had held back a Stampede single-handedly, and the title of "every mage's dream" was no exaggeration whatsoever.
And when a man like that paid a visit to the Magic Tower, it was only natural that mages came swarming with fire in their eyes. He was the one person I wanted to avoid above all others — his love for his disciple was the stuff of legend, and there was no telling what he might do if he set eyes on me. Word of my presence surely hadn't reached him yet. Even so, better safe than sorry.
I was still turning to flee when a hand closed on my shoulder. I twisted around to shake it off—
"Well, well. If it isn't... my disciple's fiancé?"
"...I trust you have been well."
Somehow — I never did learn how — Prion had carved a path straight through that crowd, and there he stood, gripping my shoulder.
He had regarded me with a quiet hostility ever since my engagement to Isabella was concluded. It was easy to see why: he had raised the girl like a daughter of his own, and no grandfather cares to see her bound by contract to some random good-for-nothing. But there had never been a shred of affection between Isabella and me — not a flicker of feeling passed between us in either direction — so the animosity struck me as more than a little unfair.
Besides, now that I had left my family, the engagement was as good as dissolved. The grounds for his hostility should have vanished along with it. Had he simply not heard?
"...I am no longer the young lady's fiancé."
"What was that?"
"I left my family not long ago, so the engagement has most likely been dissolved."
But in the instant I tried to finish declaring myself a former fiancé, his face began to flush crimson, then drain pale, then flush again.
"...So then... you're telling me... that you've made my... my precious disciple... a widow...?"
"I beg your pardon?"
Something had gone badly off the rails here.
Annulled engagements were hardly a rarity in a noble society as thick with jealous passions as this one — and even supposing ours had been dissolved, just how many people in this world would be bold enough to hold it against Isabella?
"Well... normally, a broken engagement doesn't make one a wid—"
"Haha... ha!! Hahaha!!"
This was getting frightening.
I retreated step by step, racking my brain for a way out, but before I could find one, his great hand clamped down on my shoulder again — and my stomach heaved.
I barely choked down the urge to retch, and when I looked up, the world around me had changed. The crisp open air was gone; in its place, the musty smell of ancient tomes greeted my nose. A vista that could rival any library on the continent crashed over me — shelf upon shelf, volumes beyond counting.
Teleportation? Then where was this — and what reason could he possibly have for dragging me here through space itself?
"...Sit, lad. I brought you here because I fancied a proper conversation — it has been a while."
Trusting him was out of the question, but I leaned back into a chair that had not existed a moment before and sat.
"...Time may flow on and on, but the written record never changes."
"This place stores the records of my research and of the mages who worked beside me — what the world calls the Archive."
"Few besides myself can ever set foot in here, so you may speak freely."
Speak freely, he says. How many people alive could speak freely with this man sitting across from them?
"I'm quite all right. This suits me fine."
"Hm. You're a mite different from the rumors I'd heard."
"Rumors, you say?"
"That you had rotted through to the very core."
"...Which is true."
There was no point disputing it. The deeds were mine, and I had no intention of denying them. What I did not want was for the family's standing to erode any further — if the ducal house's honor kept cracking, then Mother, who had staked her entire life on her faith in the dukedom, would be made a laughingstock.
"...So. Why did you leave your family?"
"You don't put much stock in the rumor that I was cast out?"
"The family head who indulged every last thing you ever did — did you finally commit some act so vile he had no choice but to banish you?"
"...Could that not be exactly what happened?"
"I say it because I know you are not that great a fool."
I had no way of knowing how long he had been watching me, but that was remarkable insight all the same. I had set out to deceive him in earnest — and he had unraveled it far too easily.
"...So what was the reason?"
I must have held my silence longer than I realized, for Prion — his expression gone stern — asked once more. Why had I left, he wanted to know. Money and pleasure, the twin things all the world worships — did I truly have a reason to walk out of a dukedom where I could have had my fill of both? If he asked for a reason, I had only one answer to give.
"What I want does not exist there."
"That's it? That's the whole of your reason?"
"However many souls would crawl for that position, there is nothing left in that place for me to want."
"...Then I must correct myself. It isn't that you differ from the rumors — you have changed entirely, root and branch."
Prion seemed to wrestle with something for a moment. Then, his eyes flashing a deep blue, he put his question to me once more. He had almost certainly cast Detect Lie — which meant there was something he wanted from me badly enough to spend a high-tier spell on it. I couldn't deceive him with any skill of mine regardless, so I resolved to keep to the truth, if for no other reason than to avoid earning his hatred.
"Then this thing you want... would it bring harm to the Empire?"
So that was what weighed on him. Whatever else he was, Prion, too, had become a man with things in the Empire worth protecting. Even a man who despised being tethered to any one place kept returning to the Magic Tower — that, I supposed, was why. Had my answer been yes, I could see him moving to cut me out of the picture that very instant.
I answered without a flicker of expression.
"It would not."
Because it was no lie.
What I wanted was simply to reach the limit — the extreme of what I could become. Far from harming the Empire, that might well end up serving it.
He grasped the truth of my words almost at once; as he drew his mana back in, the blue light faded from his pupils.
"Forgive an old man for testing you. I have circumstances of my own, you see."
"It's quite all right."
"...And if my disciple's conduct had any part in why you left your family... then let me apologize in her stead. I beg your forgiveness."
Isabella's temperament was, admittedly, not a kind one. He must have known it as well as anyone — that was why he bowed his head. But there was no fault to lay at his door, and for all her coldness, Isabella had only ever ignored me; never once had I seen her slander me behind my back or move against me. That much I could let pass easily enough.
Though I will confess, being the sole object of that disdain stung a little, and left a certain loneliness behind. How many people enjoy being resented without cause? But I was not so petty a man as to press the matter with him.
"It's quite all right. None of it was ever your doing, Grand Sage."
"...I thank you for saying so."
In his laboriously bitter smile, I thought I could glimpse a father's remorse. Then he asked what had brought me to the Magic Tower, and I answered him truthfully.
"...You're telling me you can mass-produce scrolls...?"
"That is so... but why do you ask?"
"Can you show me?"
So saying, he handed me a single blank sheet of paper. Swallowing the urge to sigh — this again? — I repeated, to the letter, what I had done only moments before. The sheet became a scroll between one breath and the next, and he stood rooted to the spot, unable to close his mouth.
"H-how in the world did you do that?! You must tell me!"
"...It is merely a scroll with a spellform inscribed upon it?"
"I have ransacked every corner of this world and never once laid eyes on anyone who crafts scrolls at your speed!! What manner of magic is it? Will you not share it with me?"
Even by my own reckoning, I knew I made scrolls quickly — but nowhere in all the world, he said?
"Is one not simply meant to inscribe it?"
"Do you have any idea how much control it takes to inscribe a spellform... wait. Just a moment."
He broke off, laid his palm flat against my chest — directly over my heart — and poured his mana into me. And I felt his mana brush against my mana circle. A tap. Then another. And another.
"Well, well... to think I'd live to see such a thing."
"What do you mean?"
"You felt me touch your circle, didn't you?"
"I did."
"When an outside hand stirs a circle, the mana in the body runs rampant — that is the way of things, even when there is scarcely any mana to speak of."
"...?"
"And yet you reined it in without even thinking. That, my boy, is control that defies all reason."
"....?????"
"'Talentless delinquent,' my foot — you're overflowing with the stuff. What a rotten world this is."
And you're the one saying that?
Being told out of nowhere that I had talent, it didn't quite land. Everything I had already endured was already behind me. At most, it meant the road ahead might be a little kinder. That was all.
...And yet... and yet... and yet!!
Then what was the point of everything I had suffered until now— knock, knock— what was the point of any of it... knock, knock?
"Master? May I come in?"
"?! Ah — yes, do come in."
"..No — wait just a moment!!"
The door swung open, and there she was — bowing with perfect courtesy to her master, then turning on me a pair of eyes that were half question, half guilt.
"...What are you doing here?"
"..."
Prion's one and only disciple — the person he cherished above all others. Isabella had made her entrance.